What DTH channels should I have in my buying cart?

Ever since the TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) gave a mandate to the DTH and Cable Video Service providers that they should offer an Ala-Carte mechanism for the subscriber to choose every channel that is transmitted on the air, subscribers are in a state of confusion as to what is the right mix of channels that they should have in their buying cart. More often than not, subscribers buy a channel, because they had watched it in the past, but somehow don’t end up actually watching within a subscription window. The absence of the reverse connection between the box and MSO’s infrastructure makes the problem all the more complicated for the user or MSO to monitor what are the watching patterns of the user.

So how does the user determine which channels he watches for him to renew or cancel subscriptions to some channels?

The software in the Set Top Box shall keep monitoring the number of hours the user is watching a channel and keeps a month-wise database in its internal storage, which the user can’t erase via any of the reset mechanisms available.

There shall be a User Interface option in the Settings page or somewhere, which when selected, provides a month wise listing of the number of hours the user has watched in the last 90 / 120 / 180 days.

There shall also be a QR code displayed that contains this information along with the customer ID. When the user scans the QR code, the viewing pattern is read and the MSO’s channel purchase page in the App is loaded for the user to renew channels that he has bought and give recommendation to cancel those channels that he had bought, but not viewed.

The recommendation can also be extended to those channels which the subscriber has attempted to watch, but didn’t quite have the access rights to watch.

This helps the user to better control his shopping cart of channels and also gives MSO’s accurate data on what the users watch, when and what are the users interests.